Around Broadway

Playwrights Horizons, a New York theater company with a mission devoted to supporting works by American writers, has opened its new season with a bold new play. Bootycandy, written and directed by Robert O’Hara, is a surreal and sexually explicit comedy about growing up black and gay in America. Philip James Brandon stars as Sutter, who grows from boy to man to budding playwright in the course of the play.

The prolific A.R. Gurney is among the playwrights in residence at the Signature Theatre Company this year. The first of three Gurney plays to be presented is a revival of his 1977 play The Wayside Motor Inn, in which 10 characters dealing with various life crises all check in to the same motel outside Boston. The production is directed by Lila Neugebauer.

New York City’s new theater season is a great way to cure those end-of-summer blues. There are plenty of revivals and a few choice new offerings. There are musicals and straight plays. There are star-filled casts and productions in which the play’s the thing.

New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood suggests a few — well, more than a few — shows that are likely to pique the interests of Broadway and Off-Broadway patrons.

Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way, this year’s Tony winner for best play and for its leading actor, Bryan Cranston, was a hefty drama about Lyndon Johnson and the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. But, in fact, it was only half the story: The Great Society is the name of Schenkkan’s sequel.

Summer is the slow season for Broadway, with few shows opening between the Tony Awards in June and the fall season kickoff in September. But it’s high season for theater festivals. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood made a trip to the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, one of the largest festivals in North America.

The nature of intimacy is one of the themes of Laura Eason’s new play Sex With Strangers, in which two writers first get busy and then get to know each other. Olivia is played by Anna Gunn, best-known for her portrayal of Skyler White on the AMC series “Breaking Bad.” Ethan is played by Billy Magnussen, a Tony Award nominee for his portrayal of the last of the four title characters in Vanya, Sonya, Masha, and Spike. There’s also a notable name behind the scene — the director is David Schwimmer, most recognizable from the TV show "Friends."

Your usual beauty contest features a lot of the same elements as this Off-Broadway musical making its return — lots of makeup, form-fitting costumes, noble speeches of rehearsed sincerity, and musical performances. The significant difference in Pageant is what lies beneath; the hyper-feminine contestants are all men. They're vying for the title of Miss Glamouresse and members of the audience help select the winner.

Lili is young, beautiful and married to South Texas magnate Alberto, who never appears on stage in the new Off-Broadway play Mala Herbia by Tanya Saracho, who writes for the HBO series “Looking” and “Girls.”

Those who are on stage in this story of a troubled Mexican-American trophy wife include Lili’s housekeeper, stepdaughter by one of Alberto’s earlier marriages and Lili's former lover, Mari. In spite of her name, Lili is the ostensible weed referred to in the play’s Spanish title, but she may not be the most noxious among those planted on stage.

Classical pianist Mona Golabek is a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant. She is also now a stage performer, telling the story of her mother’s life in the one-woman show The Pianist of Willesden Lane, now playing at 59E59 Theaters.

The title of Brigadoon, the 1947 musical by Lerner and Lowe, refers to a mythical Scottish town that appears for only a single day every 100 years. Though not quite as seldom seen as the town, Brigadoon the musical — the first hit by the team that later created the legendary shows My Fair Lady and Camelot — hasn’t had a Broadway revival in more than three decades. But it has been given a big new production, now extended through Aug. 17, at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.